Evaluation Comes in Many Guises

As the information visualisation (infovis) community matures, the evaluation of information visualisation techniques is becoming more of a requirement and less of an optional extra. Unfortunately, the term evaluation means dierent things to dierent people. Simply encouraging \evaluation" is too general and imprecise. There is a need for clarication as to what kind of evaluation is expected at what stage. When reporting their work, authors should clearly distinguish between exploratory, predictive, formative, and summative evaluation.